{"id":1981,"date":"2011-05-26T08:59:38","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T12:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/us-drug-war-afflicts-latin-america-and-rebounds-on-us.html"},"modified":"2011-05-26T08:59:38","modified_gmt":"2011-05-26T12:59:38","slug":"us-drug-war-afflicts-latin-america-and-rebounds-on-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/us-drug-war-afflicts-latin-america-and-rebounds-on-us.html","title":{"rendered":"U.S. drug war afflicts Latin America and rebounds on U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"The war on drugs causes violence, poverty, and illiteracy in Latin\nAmerica that drives illegal immigration into the U.S., for the profit\nof Monsanto, military contractors, and private prison companies.\nDoes that seem right to you?\n

\nNeal Peirce wrote a syndicated column 22 May 2011,\n\nMisguided U.S. drug policies afflict Mexico, Central America<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe war on drugs in Mexico, partially funded by hundreds of millions of\ndollars in U.S. government assistance, has not only failed to curb the\ntrade but intensified horrific violence, corruption and human rights\nabuses, writes Neal Peirce.\n

\nFor most Americans, the recent news of popular demonstrations in\nMexico was probably a small diversion from the daily tide of bloody\nglobal reports from such faraway hot spots as Pakistan, Syria, Libya,\nAfghanistan and Bahrain.\n

\n<\/a>\nWhy worry, most of us likely concluded, if thousands of Mexicans are\nmarching in the streets, protesting the horrific violence and high death\ntoll in their nation’s raging drug war? Isn’t that their problem?\n

\nIt’s true, the news reports focus less on the American role, more on\ngrowing anger with the government of President Felipe Calder\u00f3n and the\nmeager returns from the massive police and military crackdown on the\ndrug trade he inaugurated in 2006.\n

\nSince then, more than 37,000 Mexicans have been murdered, often tortured\nand brutalized before their deaths, as cartels battle for control of drug\nsmuggling routes and brazenly assassinate anyone, official or average\ncitizen, they think is in their way.\n

\nThe hard lesson is that the war on drug dealers, decreed by Calder\u00f3n and\npartially funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government\nassistance, has not only failed to curb the trade but intensified horrific\nviolence, corruption and human-rights abuses.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo what can be done?\n\n\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who stopped his writing after his\n24-year-old son was gunned down by drug terrorists earlier this year,\ncatalyzed the May marches. He articulated a Martin Luther King-like\nanswer to the violence convulsing his country:\n
\n“We will not turn this pain in our souls, in our bodies, in hate nor in\nmore violence, but in a vehicle to help us restore love, peace, justice\nand dignity and the stuttering democracy that we’re losing.”\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd Sicilia had a stern judgment to make \u2014 as King did in his time \u2014\nabout the U.S. government: “Since the war was unleashed as a means to\nexterminate (drug trafficking), the United States, which is the grand\nconsumer of these toxic substances, has not done anything to support us.”\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd the U.S. proposed solutions to the sources of these toxic substances?\n
\n“wasteful and harmful supply-side programs such as aerial fumigation\nand military aid.”\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/a>\nThat’s right, more profits for pesticide companies and military contractors.\nYes, Monsanto profits by the drug war, through sales of RoundUp to spray\non coca crops.\nAnd that’s backfiring.\nIn the same way RoundUp stateside is producing\n\nmutand pigweed<\/a>\nin Bolivia it’s producing mutant coca,\n\nBoliviana negra.<\/a>\n
\n\n<\/a>\nA group of 20-plus U.S. experts and advocates in drug policy and Latin\nAmerican affairs has weighed in on Sicilia’s side, calling on the\nU.S. to drop “failed prohibitionist drug policies” on our home turf\n“so that violence, corruption, assassinations and the degradation of\nMexico’s fragile democratic institutions” can be curbed.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat group calls for stopping the spraying and shooting.\nMaybe we should do that so the U.S. can preserve what’s left of its\nown fragile democratic institutions.\n

\nFurther, that group agrees with\n\nLEAP and Judge Napolitano:<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nOn its home turf, it was suggested, the U.S. should take a “first step”\nby legally taxing and regulating marijuana \u2014 noting that marijuana is\nreportedly the leading source of profit for Mexico’s traffickers.\n<\/blockquote>\nIt’s either that, or this:\n
\nA sad reality \u2014 underscored by a recent report in The Economist \u2014\nis that the drug-running and drug wars between cartels are now infecting\nvirtually all of Central America. The route to the U.S. used to be from\nColombia, the world’s top cocaine producer, across the Caribbean to the\ntip of Florida. But the U.S. Coast Guard shut that route down by the\nearly 1990s, so that shipments began to flow directly north, through\nMexico, into the United States.\n

\nSomewhere between 250 and 350 tons of cocaine, the Economist reports,\nnow pass through Guatemala on their way to the U.S. Mexico\u2019s Sinaloa,\nGulf and Zetas mobs operate through much of the Central American isthmus\nand \u2014 unlike the Colombians \u2014 pay their help in drugs, not cash.\n

\nThe results have been devastating. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador\nall have murder rates more than double that of Mexico, and Nicaragua\u2019s\nhas spiked in recent years as well. All are among the world\u2019s poorest\nnations. Guatemala, for example, is plagued by malnutrition rates of up\nto 80 percent in some rural villages. The country\u2019s average schooling\nrate is just 4.1 years.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd that violence, malnutrition, and illiteracy means high birth rates\nand more people trying to get into the U.S. to find jobs.\nThe war on drugs is the biggest driver of illegal immigration into\nthe United States.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nMeanwhile stateside we (in\n\nGeorgia<\/a> and other states) continue to lock up more of our own people,\nand pass anti-immigrant laws<\/a>\nthat will lock up more refugees from the Latin American\nmilitary battlegrounds of the drug war.\n

\nAnd now we’re turning those prisons\n\ninto private prisons<\/a>\nfor the \nprofit of private prison executives and investors<\/a>\nat the expense of we the taxpayers.\nPrivate prisons \nthat compete with domestic labor and industry.<\/a>\nThat’s\n\n<\/a>\nregulatory capture<\/a> by the war on drugs on a massive scale.\nRight here in the U.S.\n

\nContinue pervasive destablisation of governments throughout the region,\nincluding our own, or legalize drugs.\nIt is time to legalize drugs, regulate them, and tax them.\n

\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County so private prison\nexecutives and investors can profit from the war on drugs.\nSpend those tax dollars on education instead.\n

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